Ex vice-chancellor now owns online teaching website
CONTROVERSIAL FORMER DMU LEADER RECEIVED
FORMER De Montfort University vicechancellor Dominic Shellard now owns an online education website for students in the UK and India, the Mercury can confirm.
Professor Shellard has now moved into online teaching by founding AceTute, a company which offers group and individual tutoring for both British and Indian students.
Students use the company website to choose a subject and level at which they want to learn, before having a free consultation with Professor Shellard himself to identify their academic needs.
From there, they can either have group tutoring or individual tutoring.
The group option is the cheapest, starting at £10, and oneon-one tutoring costing £23 and upwards.
There are currently 191 tutors listed as working for the company, teaching a variety of subjects such as English, Science, and History from Year 1 to Year 13.
Prof Shellard controversially quit his £350,000-a-year role as DMU vice-chancellor in 2019. After he left his post, universities watchdog The Office for Students launched an investigation into “regulatory matters” at DMU alongside an internal investigation carried out by the university.
After the Office for Students inquiry concluded, DMU admitted that its governance was inadequate and its governing body – a number of whom resigned last year – “did not provide sufficient and robust oversight”, especially in relation to Prof Shellard.
He was given a significant pay-off for his departure, totalling £479,000, with De Montfort University and The Office for Students issuing their own investigations into the handling of the university under his leadership.
During his time at DMU, Prof Shellard lived in a rent-free apartment in a grade II-listed Georgian building on campus and perks included a £2,700 membership at The Club at The Ivy in Covent Garden.
His time at the university was also controversial, including spending
£479,000 PAY-OFF FROM UNIVERSITY
£22,000 on a flash mob stunt that raised only £5,000 for charity, as well as making then-Prime Minister David Cameron a Companion of the University for the legalisation of same-sex marriage without consulting the LGBT representatives at the university.
Prof Shellard is also one of the founders and current director of Theseus Aspire, a service that offers education counselling to Indian students to get into British universities.
There he works alongside James Gardner, who was the pro-vice chancellor of strategic and international partnerships at DMU during Prof Shellard’s term, and assisted in the creation of #DMUGlobal, which allowed students to travel around the world while studying at the university. Prof Shellard’s step into the Indian education market is unsurprising, given his previous experience setting up Square Mile India.
The initiative was created to help improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable families in India, bringing students over to the country to improve infrastructure and install sustainable energy in one of the poorest areas of Ahmedebad.
Describing the service on the social media pages, Theseus Aspire says it is “an elite education counselling service committed to helping Indian students fulfill their potential and apply successfully to universities in the United Kingdom”.
Following Prof Shellard’s departure, De Montfort University was instructed to make significant changes at the top of the organisation, and resulted in six new, independent governors being installed there.
A new vice-chancellor was also appointed, with Professor Katie Normington taking over the role in August 2020.
Following Prof Shellard’s departure, the university was instructed to make changes at the top